Dexter
and Arthur Mitchell (The Trinity Killer) have just finished an eventful
trip to Tampa, during which Arthur dragged Dexter to his childhood
home (where he told Dex the story about his sister's bloody death),
and then tried to kill himself by leaping from the top of a building.

Now, in this
scene, they are on their way home, back to Miami.

We see then
driving around a bend in the road. Dexter mentions Arthur's recent suicide
attempt, but he brushes it off as a mere mistake ("We all make
mistakes.")

Up ahead, Dexter
spots one of the DNA checkpoints set up by the police to help trap the
Trinity Killer.

Police plan
to stop cars at the roadblocks, then take a DNA sample (via a mouth swab)
from anyone matching Lundy's rough description of the suspect ("tall,
gray hair, blue eyes, about 60.". They will then match the DNA samples
against DNA they recovered from Trinity's crime scenes.

Dexter thinks
to himself: "Let's see how much you want to live, Arthur."

He then tells
Trinity that he heard about this on the radio, that the police are hunting
for some "huge serial killer", that they've got his DNA and are
trying to match it.

Not unexpectedly,
Arthur decides to make a U-turn and head back the way he came, suggesting
they take "the scenic route".

Q.
What is it actually in real life?

A. A street,
but nowhere near Tampa or Miami..

Q.
Where can I find it in real life?

A. This is Marina Drive
in Long Beach, CA, just a quarter
mile south of the SeaPort Marina Hotel where they filmed the Tampa hotel
scenes.

Dexter & Trinity's
van was traveling southwest on
Marina Drive. That channel of water you see on the other side of the road
is the south end of the San Gabriel River (which divides runs Seal Beach
and Long Beach).

Marina Drive
is on a narrow jetty of land that extends between that channel on one side
and the Alamitos Bay Marina on the other. On the marina side, the
road is lined by a series of large parking lots, containing a number of
seafood restaurants.

When we first
see Dexter & Trinity in the van, they are rounding the curve from
E. Marina Drive to N. Marina Drive. (You can glimpse
a boating store out the passenger-side window.) Then the road straightens
out and heads southwest.

They set up
the DNA checkpoint at a turn-in to one of these parking lots, between the
Crab Pot restaurant (at 215 Marina Drive) and the Schooner Or Later
restaurant (at 241 Marina Drive).

I
shot the photos below in 2009.

In
the shot above, we are looking back, northeast, on Marina Drive,
midway between where they set up the
flashing "Checkpoint Ahead / Prepare to Stop" sign and where
they set up the DNA checkpoint.

In
the shot below, we are looking ahead, southwest, on Marina Drive.
from the basically same spot.

A. I've
driven this street several times (including once when I was searching for
the boating store), so I recognized it
when I saw it.

Also, back when
they were filming at the nearby hotel, I
noticed food service tables set up on Marina Drive (used to feed the crew),
so I kept an eye out for a scene filmed somewhere on the street.

Once I saw
the scene, it was just a matter of pinpointing the exact spot on Marina
Drive where they set up the road block, and that was easy due to that blue
pipe in the red-tile divider (visible in the second photo from the top).